Wonder Book + Tanglewood Tales Greek Myths Retold for Young Readers: Medusa, Midas, Pegasus, Hercules, and the Minotaur

Bringing together A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood Tales, this volume presents Nathaniel Hawthorne's imaginative retellings of Greek myths, from "The Gorgon's Head" and "The Golden Touch" to "The Minotaur" and "The Dragon's Teeth." Framed through the genial storyteller Eustace Bright, the tales domesticate antiquity for nineteenth-century young readers without stripping it of wonder, moral ambiguity, or symbolic force. Hawthorne's prose is lucid, musical, and gently archaic, blending fireside intimacy with Romantic fascination for myth as a vessel of ethical imagination. Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem in 1804, was already renowned for probing guilt, inheritance, and moral secrecy in works such as The Scarlet Letter when he turned to these stories. His New England background, Puritan ancestry, and lifelong interest in allegory shaped his approach: even in books for children, he sought not mere ornament but inward education. Writing for a family audience, he transformed pagan materials into narratives of curiosity, temptation, courage, and humane judgment. This collection is ideal for readers who want myth presented with narrative grace rather than handbook brevity. Children will find adventure; adults will perceive Hawthorne's artful mediation between antiquity and Victorian childhood, making the volume both an enchanting introduction to myth and a minor classic of American literary adaptation.